James Gunn, "Paratexts: Introductions to Science Fiction and Fantasy"
English | 2013 | ISBN: 0810891220 | 242 pages | EPUB | 1 MB
In the mid-1980s, Easton Press began publishing a series of leather-bound collector editions called "Masterpieces of Science Fiction" and "Masterpieces of Fantasy," which featured some of the most important works in these genres. James Gunn was commissioned to write introductions to these works, which allowed him to pay tribute to many authors who inspired and influenced his own work.

Samah Selim, "Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nahda in Egypt"
English | 2019 | ISBN: 3030203646 | PDF | pages: 235 | 2.4 mb
This book is a critical study of the translation and adaptation of popular fiction into Arabic at the turn of the twentieth century. It examines the ways in which the Egyptian nahda discourse with its emphasis on identity, authenticity and renaissance suppressed various forms of cultural and literary creation emerging from the encounter with European genres as well as indigenous popular literary forms and languages. The book explores the multiple and fluid translation practices of this period as a form of 'unauthorized' translation that was not invested in upholding nationalist binaries of originality and imitation. Instead, translators experimented with radical and complex forms of adaptation that turned these binaries upside down. Through a series of close readings of novels published in the periodical The People's Entertainments, the book explores the nineteenth century literary, intellectual, juridical and economic histories that are constituted through translation, and outlines a comparative method of reading that pays particular attention to the circulation of genre across national borders.

Instagram for Fiction Authors: How to Find Readers, Build Community, and Sell More Books
By Hanna R. Sandvig
English | 2020 | ASIN: B08L21BLD7 | 221 pages | EPUB, MOBI, PDF | 5 MB

Speaking Science Fiction: Dialogues and Interpretations By Andy Sawyer, David Seed
2001 | 255 Pages | ISBN: 0853238448 | PDF | 3 MB
This wide-ranging volume explores the various dialogues that flourish between different aspects of science fiction: academics and fans, writers and readers; ideological stances and national styles; different interpretations of the genre; and how language and ''voices'' are used in constructing SF. Introduced by the acclaimed novelist Brian W. Aldiss, the essays range from studies of writers such as Robert A. Heinlein, who are considered as the ''heart'' of the genre, to more contemporary writers such as Jack Womack and J. G. Ballard.

The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction: The Water Margin and the Making of a National Canon by Columbia University Press
English | October 15, 2019 | ISBN: 0231193343 | 264 pages | PDF | 5.55 Mb
The classic Chinese novel The Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) tells the story of a band of outlaws in twelfth-century China and their insurrection against the corrupt imperial court. Imported into Japan in the early seventeenth century, it became a ubiquitous source of inspiration for translations, adaptations, parodies, and illustrated woodblock prints. There is no work of Chinese fiction more important to both the development of early modern Japanese literature and the Japanese imagination of China than The Water Margin.

Sylvain Rheault, Philippe Mather, "Rediscovering French Science-Fiction in Literature, Film and Comics"
English | 2015 | ISBN: 1443886769 | PDF | pages: 235 | 2.8 mb
French science-fiction (SF) is as old as the French language. Cyrano de Bergerac wrote about a trip to the moon that was published back in 1657, as did Jules Verne in 1865, this time using hard, scientific facts. The first movie showing a trip to the moon was made by Georges Méliès in 1902. In the comics format, Hergé had Tintin walk on the moon in 1954, 15 years before Neil Armstrong. These are just a few of the many unique French contributions to SF that rightly deserve to be better known. One of the purposes of this collection is to introduce French SF to an English-speaking audience. Rediscovering French Science Fiction... first revisits proto science-fiction from authors like Cyrano de Bergerac and Jules Verne, before delving into contemporary science-fiction works from authors such as René Barjavel and Jacques Spitz. A contribution from preeminent SF author Élisabeth Vonarburg, from Québec, helps to understand the constraints and advantages of writing SF in French. A third section is devoted to French SF in movies and graphic novels, media where French creators have been recognized worldwide. This collection explores many aspects of French SF, including the genres deep roots in popular culture, the influence of key authors on its historical development, and the form and function of science and fantasy, as well as the impact of films and graphic novels on the public perception of the genres nature.

The Novel Now: Contemporary British Fiction By Richard Bradford
2007 | 267 Pages | ISBN: 1405113855 | PDF | 3 MB
The Novel Now is an intelligent and engaging survey of contemporary British fiction. Discusses familiar names such as Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, and Angela Carter and compares them with more recent authors, including David Mitchell, Ali Smith, A.L. Kennedy, Matt Thorne, Nicola Barker, and Toby Litt Incorporates original coverage of subgenres such as chick lit, lad lit, gay fiction, crime fiction, and the historical novel Discusses the ways in which notions of regional identity and tribalist views have surfaced in UK and Irish fiction, and how post-Imperial sensibility has become a feature of the вЂBritish’ novel Situates contemporary fiction within its socio-cultural and literary contexts.

Disorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century British Novels By James Buzard
2005 | 331 Pages | ISBN: 0691095558 | PDF | 6 MB
This book gives an ambitious revisionist account of the nineteenth-century British novel and its role in the complex historical process that ultimately gave rise to modern anthropology's concept of culture and its accredited researcher, the Participant Observer. Buzard reads the great nineteenth-century novels of Charles Dickens, Charlotte BrontГ«, George Eliot, and others as ''metropolitan autoethnographies'' that began to exercise and test the ethnographic imagination decades in advance of formal modern ethnography--and that did so while focusing on Western European rather than on distant Oriental subjects. Disorienting Fiction shows how English Victorian novels appropriated and anglicized an autoethnographic mode of fiction developed early in the nineteenth century by the Irish authors of the National Tale and, most influentially, by Walter Scott. Buzard demonstrates that whereas the fiction of these non-English British subjects devoted itself to describing and defending (but also inventing) the cultural autonomy of peripheral regions, the English novels that followed them worked to imagine limited and mappable versions of English or British culture in reaction against the potential evacuation of cultural distinctiveness threatened by Britain's own commercial and imperial expansion. These latter novels attempted to forestall the self-incurred liabilities of a nation whose unprecedented reach and power tempted it to universalize and export its own customs, to treat them as simply equivalent to a globally applicable civilization. For many Victorian novelists, a nation facing the prospect of being able to go and to exercise its influence just about anywhere in the world also faced the danger of turning itself into a cultural nowhere. The complex autoethnographic work of nineteenth-century British novels was thus a labor to disorient or de-globalize British national imaginings, and novelists mobilized and freighted with new significance some basic elements of prose narrative in their efforts to write British culture into being. Sure to provoke debate, this book offers a commanding reassessment of a major moment in the history of British literature.

Contemporary British Fiction By Nick Bentley
2008 | 265 Pages | ISBN: 0748624198 | PDF | 2 MB
Nick Bentley provides an introduction to the major novelists and the main themes in narrative fiction over the last 35 years. He offers a critical discussion of important debates in contemporary fiction engaging with concepts such as postmodernism; the impact of feminism and gender in literary studies; the rise of postcolonial literary theory; and the place of fiction within broader debates in contemporary culture. Bentley offers thought-provoking analysis of a range of British writers including Martin Amis, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Ian McEwan, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Jeanette Winterson. The book grounds the discussion of selected novels in the historical and theoretical contexts of the period. It opens with a chronology followed by a comprehensive Introduction that provides a historical context to the study of contemporary British fiction by detailing significant social, political and cultural events of the period 1975-2005. This is followed by five chapters organized around the core themes: (1) Narrative Forms, (2) Contemporary Ethnicities, (3) Gender and Sexuality, (4) History, Memory and Writing, and (5) Narratives of Cultural Space. A Conclusion, Student Resources and Glossary close the book. Key Features*Introduces the major themes and trends in British fiction over the last 35 years *Analyses a range of writers and texts including Brick Lane by Monica Ali, London Fields by Martin Amis; The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter; Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby; Atonement by Ian McEwan, Shame by Salman Rushdie, Downriver by Iain Sinclair, and White Teeth by Zadie Smith *Presents a variety of critical perspectives essential for studying contemporary British fiction *Provides essential resources for further reading and research

British Fiction After Modernism: The Novel at Mid-Century By Marina MacKay, Lyndsey Stonebridge
2007 | 234 Pages | ISBN: 1403986428 | PDF | 2 MB
This collection of essays by leading and emergent critics of twentieth-century fiction offers a wide-ranging and provocative reassessment of the British novel's achievements after modernism. Focusing on mid-century writing, the book identifies continuities of preoccupation - with national identity, historiography and the challenge to literary form presented by public and private violence--that span the entire century. The book offers new readings of such famous figures as Amis, Golding, Greene and Spark, and reappraises the work of brilliant but less familiar contemporaries including Ann Quin, Elizabeth Taylor and Storm Jameson.